Hinge fittings such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,999,247 and 4,223,947 are known in the art for a vehicle seat having an adjustable tiltable backrest member with pivotally connected hinge members, including a seat back bracket having a toothed sector engaged by a toothed pawl pivotally mounted on a seat bracket and held in locked engagement by a cam also pivotally mounted on the seat bracket. The cam has a limited pawl engagement face having an intermediate operative range when all lost motion is taken up through the teeth in self-locking interengagement covering the extremities of all tolerance possibilities of the interengaging elements and with irreversible self-locking action against cam disengagement under any vibration or backrest tilting pressure in any direction. The cam is biased toward an engaging position by resilient spring means and is moved to a release position by a handle mounted on a cam pivot shaft adapted to overcome the spring bias and move the cam to release position under manual actuation.
Such release handle arrangement requires manual actuation in direct proximity with the cam location in the hinge bracket, which is not always in a convenient position for the seat occupant. In order to accommodate manual release actuation at a location remote from the cam, bracket extensions have been devised for pivotal handle mounting spaced from the cam pivot with linkage extending between the handle mounting and the cam actuated by the handle. Examples are disclosed in copending applications, Ser. No. 651,911 filed on Sept. 19, 1984 and Ser. No. 687,954 filed on Dec. 31, 1984 which have been assigned to Keiper Recaro, Inc., owner of the present application. While such bracket extension provisions for pivotal mounting of the release handle accommodate convenient manual actuation adequate for certain installation as an integral part of the hinge construction, the need and customer desire for even more convenient actuation, e.g., with manual release levers installed in central armrests such as available in some recreational vehicles, has led to the consideration of cable releases which would accommodate manual actuation from any desired location remote from the hinge cam. Certain attempts have been made to provide such cable release by attachments at a remote pivot for a conventional release handle adapted to actuate a linear slidable toothed pawl engageable with a toothed sector. However, such attempts have not been entirely satisfactory, in failing to provide the dependable action of a pivoted cam for locking a pivoted pawl in the adjusted position of the seat back.